Joyce may have left the building, but don't expect any changes at Qantas

The four top shareholders in Qantas are all nominee companies, which means they hold shares for a number of passive shareholders.

While their shareholding amounts to 63.04 percent (according to the 2022 Annual Report), and while they could theoretically stage a revolt, their most likely remedy is to head for the doors themselves.

But then they can't do that because when everyone wants to sell at the same time, there aren't enough parachutes to go around.

So what we have is a company where the board gets to control other people's money and spends it without accountability to either the market or their shareholders, and this allows their employees to grab inflated remuneration at the same time as delivering sub-par performance, all without any accountability bar some public relations damage which they can soothe with their severance packages as they retire to Noosa.

It's easy to make out a case from this behaviour that capitalism is corrupt, and we need to redistribute wealth, but that is a mistake.

You can make a better case that the real problem is not enough capitalism. With less government interference and a better functioning market tall poppies like Alan Joyce and his board would not be able to get ahead of themselves.

And shareholders should perhaps think about paying less attention to ESG factors, and more attention to operational ones.

For all Qantas has paid tribute to the fashionable virtues, underneath its vices have been allowed to grow.